1 billion times brighter than the sun: Will Jeff Lab's beam lead to new discoveries?

NEWPORT NEWS — — Scientists across the United States are e-mailing Gwyn P. Williams.

The reason: they want to test drive a one-of-a-kind laser that, according to Williams, could be a catalyst for several Nobel Prizes.

Completed last month at Jefferson Lab, the Department of Energy nuclear physics facility, the laser is roughly a billion times brighter than the sun.

Williams, deputy division head of the lab's Free Electron Laser facility, said it may help scientists solve vexing questions about energy loss in diesel engines and power lines, as well as determining the age of polar ice cores.

"It's kind of like landing on a planet for the first time, or discovering a new country," he said.

Essentially, the laser strikes molecules, which causes them stir about and allows scientists a chance to better understand their behavior.

George Neil, associate director of the lab's FEL division, put in this way: "It actually plays the molecule like a pianist plays a piano or a guitarist frets a guitar's strings — by hitting the right keys that make the molecule react."

Its potential caught the attention of Craig Taatjes, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., who studies chemical reactions in internal combustion engines.

While widespread since the 19th century, combustion engines are filled with unknowns, such as why 30 percent of the diesel fuel they burn is not utilized. The laser may help Taatjes solve that mystery and lead to more efficient engines.

"You wouldn't have to clean out the exhaust coming from the tailpipe," Taatjes said.

Scientists studying polar ice cores — long tubes of ice drawn from Antarctica, Greenland and high mountain glaciers — are also interested in the laser, Williams said.

The cores show thousands of years of temperature records and atmospheric conditions, such as sea levels, volcanic eruptions and the variability of the sun.

Radiocarbon dating enables scientists to date material up to 62,000 years but many cores are older. Using the laser, scientists may be able to date the cores up to a million years by measuring another element: krypton.

"That's a biggie," Williams said, adding the method may help develop maps of groundwater movement and ocean circulation models.

The laser also could help scientists study new superconducting metals, such as bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, or BSCCO, that have been discovered in recent decades, Williams said.

Relatively unknown, these metals have the potential to deliver electricity without losing power, Williams said. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated a nationwide energy loss of 6.5 percent in 2007 related to electricity transmission and distribution.

While the laser is the result of roughly nine months of planning, it's a cumulative effort that began 12 years ago with the construction of the Free Electron Laser facility, Williams said.

The facility is a spinoff of the lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, which smashes atoms together to uncover the most basic particles that make up the universe.

Williams and about 40 co-workers spent roughly nine months developing the laser at a cost of $3 million. They submitted a $10 million proposal to the Energy Department for equipment upgrades to make it work.

Eventually they hope to create an even more powerful laser at a cost of roughly $100 million. For the time being, though, they plan to have outside scientists begin using the laser this summer.

"What's next is to do spectacular science with it; to get three Nobel Prizes with it," Williams said.